Meet NASA ’ s Next Team of Astronauts to Visit the Far Side of the Moon

Time was, there were 24 living astronauts who could boast of having visited the moon. The years and mortality have taken their toll, and half a century on, that rarefied fraternity has dwindled to 10 very old men. Today, however, NASA took a big step toward adding to their ranks, announcing the names of the four astronauts who will fly around the far side of the moon on the Artemis II mission scheduled for launch sometime in November 2024. The crew is made up of three Americans and one Canadian astronaut, and includes the first woman and first person of color to visit the moon. They will fly a 10-day journey that will swing them once around the far side of the moon, taking them farther into space than any astronauts have ever traveled before. The current distance record is held by the crew of Apollo 13, who reached a distance of 401,056 km (249,205 mi.) from Earth during the one swing their crippled spacecraft made around the lunar far side in April 1970. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Artemis II’s 10-day mission follows the successful 25-day, uncrewed lunar mission of Artemis I, which launched on Nov. 16, 2022, and proved the mettle of NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket, and the Orion spacecraft. Most dramatically, the Artemis I mission successfully tested the ability of Orion’s heat shield to withstand the blistering 2,760º C (5,000º F) heat of reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. The Artemis II crew will rely on...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news